Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed, millisecond-duration radio bursts prevailing in the universe. Recent observations of a Galactic FRB suggest that at least some FRBs originate from magnetars, but it is unclear whether the majority of cosmological FRBs, especially the actively repeating ones, are produced from the magnetar channel. Until now, more than 800 FRBs have been detected by worldwide radio telescopes, and astronomers have found several tens of repeating FRBs. However, the polarimetric properties of FRBs are not well studied, which is an important way to learn about the physical origins of FRBs. In this talk, I will briefly review the recent important discoveries of FRBs, and then present our recent work on an active repeating source, FRB 20201124A, our radio observations using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) provide evidence for a complicated, dynamically evolving, magnetized immediate environment within about an astronomical of the source. Our optical observations show that its host galaxy is a Milky-Way-sized, metal-rich barred spiral galaxy.
BIO
Heng Xu is a postdoc at the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, he obtained his PhD degree from Peking University. His research interests include pulsar timing, pulsar timing arrays and fast radio bursts.
Related Article: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05071-8
